Monday, February 4, 2013

It was a great game, again, but so were some commercials......

Perhaps it was just meant to be that the halftime entertainment at Super Bowl 47 included a reunion of the 90's girl group Destiny's Child. Destiny fell on the side of the Baltimore Ravens, and not the San Francisco 49ers, despite a furious comeback by the Niners in the 3rd quarter. San Francisco never led, and could only get within 2 after a failed 2-point conversion following a touchdown run by QB Colin Kaepernick in the 4th quarter.

Baltimore sacrificed two points on a self-induced safety with 4 seconds left, and stopped San Francisco return specialist Ted Ginn, Jr. at midfield to end the game, a 34-31 Ravens win.

San Francisco had waited 18 years to get back to the Big Game. It took the Ravens 12. It was also the last stop on the Ray Lewis Farewell Tour, and like John Elway & Michael Strahan before him, Lewis goes out a winner. Unlike those others, however, Lewis is still dogged by controversy that will continue to dominate sports headlines for another few weeks.

San Francisco made their comeback after a power outage that lasted more than a half hour in the 3rd quarter, outscoring Baltimore 17-3 from that point. However, once the Ravens got it back in gear, they did just enough to win the game. There were so few penalties called, as usual, it wouldn't have mattered if the referee was Jerome Boger, working his first Super Bowl, or Steve Harvey. I'm surprised there weren't too many Family Feud jokes headed into this game. I may've been the only one.

Of course, there were the commercials, which get more attention. The best of this year's group came from Ram Trucks, now a separate entity as part of Chrysler. Ram pulled up a 1978 speech by the late radio legend Paul Harvey, and set it against a montage of clips of, well, farmers. 



And, then, there is the ridiculous, like M & M's Red (Billy West) doing a sendup of Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love". From M & M's YouTube channel:



And Beck's new Sapphire beer, featuring a clip of Blackstreet's 1996 hit, "No Diggity":



The advertisers spend all that money, and most of the ads, while imaginative, are about as appealing as watching paint dry, except for the Ram spot. Maybe Vince McMahon should hire some of the ad writers for his WWE staff.........

2 comments:

magicdog said...

The Dodge truck commercial was great - the trouble is most Dodge trucks are made in Mexico and is owned by a foreign entity. But I give it a pass because I miss Paul Harvey (RIP).

The M&M commercials for the most part, creep me out, and their latest is no exception. The only one I really liked was the Christmas one in which they meet Santa - and faint!

There was another one for Budweiser showing the Clydesdale and his handler. It was so sweet - it always makes me misty!

Now here's a great car commercial extolling the virtues of the Hyundai Santa Fe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUARXDu2mMg

Here's a truncated version with a different ending, but no less satisfying:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn6vWm41o3k



hobbyfan said...

Lest we forget there was also that silly spot for Tide (Montana Stain) that was to me a bit on the silly side. I know there've been some rubes who thought they saw an outline of Jesus on everything from a napkin to a bowl of soup, so this was a satire on same. Didn't work for me.

I'll punch up that Hyundai ad later.